Contrast
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LAYER STYLES

Most beginning designers are familiar with the simple concept of contrast, but mastering the various ways in which you can control contrast is paramount to creating great designs. Not only because you can create something that catches your viewer’s eye, but you can guide their eye, and create designs that have lasting interest.

Let’s start at the basics, though.

What is Contrast?

While most people have a basic understanding of the term, contrast really encompasses any measurable difference between various visual traits and elements in a design.

Contrast can be measured in regards to brightness, color, texture, size, shape, type, and more; many of which we’ll talk about below.

We’ll also look at some of the common tools we can use to control contrast.

Why create contrast?

The human eye, like those of most animals, is largely contrast-based. We use difference in brightness and color to make sense of things. The greater the levels of contrast, the quicker and easier we can understand what we’re seeing. So, our eyes generally seek out contrast to understand as much of our environment as quickly as possible, at any given time.

In design, high contrast grabs a viewer’s attention, and adds interest to a work.

Sounds great, eh? 

Sure, but an all-too-common mistake that many beginning designers make - myself included - is the temptation to add too much contrast over an entire design. This is problematic because the viewer doesn’t know where to look, and might become overwhelmed by the design as a whole.

Instead, we should control the contrast of a design to lead the viewer’s eye where we want it to go, and to practically make it easier for them to read or see design elements.

What is ‘good’ contrast? 

Most of the time when people say ‘good’ contrast, what they really mean is high contrast. As we just discussed, however, high contrast isn’t always desirable because it can leave us not knowing where to look.

Even in designs that feature it, high contrast should be controlled to only the subject area of the design. This is because high contrast attracts the viewer’s eye, and we almost always want our viewer’s eye to go to the subject of a design first.

In short, high contrast does not always equal good contrast.

‘Good’ contrast will be dependent on the overall design, and the intended look for the project. There are countless outstanding designs out there that purposefully demonstrate low contrast throughout the whole design.

We’ve already discussed many of the benefits of high contrast, such as attracting a viewer’s eye, adding interest to a work, and making elements easier to distinguish. But what about low contrast?

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF LOW CONTRAST?

Low contrast designs feel calm and grounded compared to higher contrast designs.

In many ways, contrast, like color, feels energetic to the viewer, so high contrast designs can be overstimulating and difficult to look at for long periods of time. By comparison, low contrast designs are chill. They invite you to look at them for extended periods without overwhelming you.

Practically speaking, choosing to make certain elements lower contrast than others means the lower contrast elements aren’t competing for the viewer’s eye.

This is good!

This is a major way in which we can control the order in which the viewer explores any given design.

Types of Contrast

As mentioned above, there are many ways in which you can control contrast within a design, including: 

• Brightness Contrast

• Color Contrast

• Texture Contrast

• Size Contrast

• Shape Contrast

• Type Contrast

Brightness Contrast

The simplest idea of contrast that most creators are aware of is brightness contrast, which is the difference between the shadows and the highlights of an image. In many ways, this is the default understanding of contrast.

If, for whatever reason, I were to ask a random person whether an image had high contrast or not, they would likely assume that I meant brightness contrast, if they knew what the hell I was talking about at all.

If there are pure white and pure black in my image or design, then it would have high brightness contrast.

If values don’t go anywhere near either black or white, then the design would surely have low brightness contrast.

Generally speaking, a viewer’s eye will be attracted to brightness within an image. So, if you are creating a design with high brightness contrast, it’s usually best if your subject (the focal point of your image) is part of the brighter portion of the image. 

Like we’ll discuss throughout, however, the difference matters most, so having a dark subject in a predominantly bright design works well, too.

Color Contrast

Color contrast is a measurement of the proximity of a design’s colors around a color circle. In other words, color contrast is about how similar, or dissimilar, the colors are in a design.

Another, but less common, use of the term is related to the amounts of colors used.

A design that features high color contrast likely features colors that are complementary (or close to it). This means that the colors are far apart on a color circle, and their hue angles are significantly different (~180°).

On the other hand, if a design’s colors are analogous, then the design would have a low color contrast. Analogous colors are closer together on a color circle.

As we’ve discussed in the Color Theory article, colors like red, orange, and yellow are the most visible to the human eye, and generally are the colors that stand out most immediately to a viewer. So, if your design features one of these colors, they should probably be on or around your subject, so that the viewer’s eye is focused there first. 

That said, like many of the other kinds of contrast, it’s really about difference. If a design is predominantly yellow, then even a blue element will stand out.

Texture Contrast

Texture contrast is when texture in your design is different or inconsistent across all elements. 

Perhaps you have noticeable texture on certain design elements while others don’t have a texture at all. Or maybe some design elements feature one sort of texture while others feature another.

Depending on the texture, and what it does visually to your element, the textured part of your image may or may not be the part that grabs the viewer’s eye. It all depends. 

Size Contrast

Size contrast is a measurement of the size difference between elements in your design, especially as it relates to similar elements, like layers of text or repeating shape layers. 

Generally speaking, larger elements will feel more important to the viewer, but it’s really more about what’s different. If your design is full of large shapes, and there’s a singular small shape, then the viewer will naturally be more interested in the shape that’s different. 

Shape Contrast

Going off of the concepts of size contrast, shape contrast is really about whether a shape element is different and stands out from the rest of the elements in your design.

If your design is covered in squares, then a circle will look and feel significant to a viewer. 

Type Contrast

In many ways, what people consider type contrast is a combination of the other kinds of contrast that we’ve already discussed. 

If a type is larger, then it will feel more important. This really seems more like a matter of size contrast than type contrast, though, eh?

If we have different fonts featured within a singular design, however, then it could be said that the design has type contrast.

Generally speaking, script and display fonts are more likely to be eye-catching, but that sort of goes along with the context of how these types are generally used, which are as headlines and titles, so they’re generally bigger and more prominent in a design than comparably plain serif and sans serif fonts that are likely smaller and more text-heavy.

Tools to create contrast
(LAYER STYLES)

Aside from using elements of contrasting values, here are some of the most important tools to utilize when creating contrast in Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, and other similar programs:

• Drop Shadow

• Stroke

• Outer Glow

• Gradient Overlay

• Pattern Overlay

These tools are often called ‘Layer Styles’, but you might find them under other terms, like ‘Blending Options’.

Drop Shadow

Not everyone is familiar with the term ‘Drop Shadow’, but most people know it when they see it.

Basically, drop shadow is a layer style that gives your layer the illusion of depth by creating a virtual shadow underneath it.

More technically speaking, drop shadow is a visual element that appears behind your layer, and can look very different, depending on the amount of size, spread, direction, and distance that you add to the layer style.

You can also make the drop shadow whatever color you want, although most people stick with the good-old-fashioned black drop shadow for a more natural look.

In many ways, the size, spread, direction, and distance adjustments allow you to alter the virtual light that’s casting the shadow, as well as imply distance between the layer and the layer behind it.

Size and spread affect how soft the shadow effect is.

Personally, I go one of two ways. Either I make the shadow so soft and smooth as to be almost imperceptible, or I make it a crisp, hard shadow. That’s just me, and most people exist somewhere in between those extremes. 

Direction is simply the direction in which the virtual light is shining from, which determines the direction that your virtual shadow is cast.

If you’re going for a realistic look, the shadow should almost always be pointing down toward the bottom of the design (since light usually comes from above). Of course, you have full control of the direction of the shadow, and can do whatever makes the most sense and, more importantly, works in your design.

The practical purpose of drop shadow is to help your layer stand out from the layer behind it. For instance, if you have white text over a background with various luminance levels, black drop shadow will help to make your text more legible against the brighter portions of the background.

In regards to color, it’s best if the drop shadow color and/or brightness contrasts with the element. If you want high contrast, make the drop shadow a complementary color to the element. If you want lower contrast, make it an analogous color.

Keep in mind that drop shadow that is too similar in color to the element - such as using a black drop shadow under black text - actually hurts legibility and readability by obscuring the edges of the text.

Stroke

Another, simpler way to control the contrast of an element is to add stroke. Stroke is a tracing of color that appears around the edges of your element.

With stroke, you can control the color, width, and position of the layer style.

Many of the same ideas of color for drop shadow apply to stroke as well. It’s best if the stroke color contrasts with the element color.

The width of the stroke simply affects how thick - and how prominent - the stroke effect is. 

Finally, you can choose for the stroke to be applied to the outside of the element, the inside, or directly on top of the edge. Do whatever works with your element. Generally speaking, applying it to the inside creates a sharper stroke, while applying to the outside creates a more rounded stroke.

Outer Glow

In many ways, outer glow works like a mix between drop shadow and stroke.

Generally speaking, outer glow emanates from your element in all directions - like stroke - and you can control how far the glow reaches, how soft the effect is, and what color it is - like drop shadow. 

Again, you should contrast the color of the outer glow against the color of your element if you’re trying to increase the visible contrast.

Practically speaking, however, outer glow is also a nice effect to use as a realistic glow. In this case, it makes much more sense for the glow to be the same, or similar, color as the element.

Gradient Overlay

A gradient is a color overlay in which there are multiple colors, and the transition from color to color is (usually) smooth and subtle.

Gradients inherently have (some) contrast because their poles are different values. 

Depending on several factors within your design, it can be advantageous to add a gradient overlay to your element to either make it contrast more with the background or elements at its edges, or to make it blend in more with those same elements.

Pattern Overlay

A pattern overlay is pretty self-explanatory, and is when a pattern is laid directly over your element. 

This effect can be done many ways, such as using a clipping mask, but Photoshop makes it easy by having a pattern overlay as a layer style. 

You can use a pattern overlay to create contrast against an element or background with a different pattern or an element that has no pattern - and ideally no texture - to create texture contrast, which was discussed above. 

CONCLUSION: Good Contrast Is About Control

While high contrast elements grab a viewer’s attention, too much contrast all over a design leaves the viewer not knowing where to look.

This is why it’s important not only to know how to add contrast to a design, but to know when, where, and how much to control the contrast across an image to guide your viewer’s eye. 

Basically, you (usually) want to utilize high contrast elements on the most central and important parts of your design, and purposefully (and carefully) tone down the contrast over the rest of the design, so that there’s a focal point for the viewers’ eyes to land on.

From there, hopefully the viewer has decided that your design is interesting enough to continue exploring.